No he didn't. SodaAnt was completely accurate in his assessment of the marginal cost of moving from the 7970 to the GTX 780. SleepyFE subtly changed the subject to the total cost of the GTX 780 to make a snarky comment which implied he said something much dumber.Reply

Soda ant get off your sofa and take a math course. You have all obviously overlooked the cost of the depreciating dollar and inflation which over 2 years adds #)($*@#()$* to the amount you paid originally.Reply

Lets not forget that we have to put a value on the time he invested purchasing and reselling the cards. Did his assessment include shipping costs? What about electricity or gas costs for heating or cooling his home while he was partaking in these activities?Reply

In one sentence you have joined him as one of the countless people who fail at reading comprehension. Bravo sir. What a joke LOL.BTW great of you to be so specific yet vague enough with that "most of OECD". Can't be more specific about WHICH countries are failing? Scared of raising the ire of citizens of those countries? HahaReply

Correct, but that wasn't my point. My point was that I paid $70 to upgrade my GPU. I consider the 7970 purchase to already be paid for, and I was already looking to do a GPU upgrade, so I did not factor the $220 into my calculation.

Even a few months ago, the difference would have easily been $200 or more for the same upgrade, so I was commenting that it was an excellent deal for me.Reply

i've been thinking about it myself as I have a 7970 Boost Edition basically Ghz card that I paid $400 for in june. I can sell it now for a profit but it only works if you go NV with the new card and since I prefer AMD kinda no point for me. Reply

If this continues, Nvidia cards will definitely be the ones to get for gaming in the future. I hope this ends up making some nice profits for AMD to get themselves out of the hole they're in, but if I were them I'd be very careful with this "strategy", because they might end up losing a lot of market share chasing these short term profits, and it might not be very easy to recover that market share once the crypto-miners stop needing them, and force the AMD card prices to fall again.Reply

AMD does not make any profits here, only retailers. Unfortunate, greedy reality. I honestly just wish this foolish 'craze' would go away so I can buy an R9 290 at MSRP. Everyone is trying to cash-in on a get rich quick scheme. So desperate.Reply

yup eventually you will see a flood of 7xxx and the new series cards for cheap once ASIC's take over litecoin mining. The problem will be is anyone going to buy a card that was mining 24/7 I would be worried about the longevity of those cards.Reply

If all these altcoins do the same thing Bitcoin did, the miners will all have to move to ASICs as GPUs become to slow to mine profitably. At that point the world of GPUS will come crashing back to reality. There will also be a glut of heavily used cards on sale for peanuts.Reply

Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on your point of view), this is unlikely to happen. There are already alternative cryptocoins out there (Vertcoin most notably) which use different algorithms designed so that they can still be GPU-mined, but will be resistant to at least the current round of ASICs. Sure, if Vertcoin becomes the next big thing, there may eventually be ASICs for that too, but by that time the GPU miners will have invented another altcoin. There are a lot of people with massive racks of GCN GPUs and a vested interest in keeping that hashing power valuable.Reply

Or if you can't beat them, join them, I bought r9 290 at $500 and I have almost mined enough to break even the difference from its suggested price in the past 2 weeks, also power cost is not really that much as I actually turned down my heater while mining. (I still mine while gaming as they uses different operations, a low intensity mining does not impact gaming performance much)Reply

Not Gunna lie this is bad news for ATI fans, in fact like the SodaAnt posted this will ultimately drive people into NVidias top end single card solution the 780 Ti. Even getting 2 780's in SLI for 1k is going to be better and post higher frame rates. This is for Gaming not others aka the miners driving up GPU prices.Reply

As long as AMD cards are always seen and reviewed as gaming kit and do well, they will stay in the minds ofgamers. And as long as that is happening, I doubt AMD will complain about selling nearly every high margin card they can.Reply

Seriously? Could you provide a source for that? I love it when some random guy from eastern Europe says it's 'only happening in the US', as though the US isn't the largest market for components/electronics in the world, and certainly a far larger market than where ever they're from. Reply

Nah, there's plenty of people who can't stand nVidia or who have too much to gain from Mantle's performance enhancements. I'll stick with my bios-overclocked Windforce 7950 until I can get an R9 290 for under $400.

The increased demand for AMD video cards will ultimately be met with increased supply. After all, AMD is still making the same profit off of each card sold, so it stands to reason they will ramp up production as fast as they can, and eventually, the equilibrium in the system will be restored, and AMD's graphics card market share will likely outstrip nVidia's again.Reply

I sure hope AMD is getting at least some of that additional profit. From my point of view they could shift all Hawaii stock to the US and sell them for whatever for works there. Order more from TSMC and once the dust settles give them to the rest of the world at prices as planned.Reply

Up until a few weeks ago, when the increases over MSRP were fairly modest and limited to just Tahiti and Hawaii, AMD was probably coming out ahead. After all, they were selling out of all their silicon, even though Tahiti is a 2-year-old design that hadn't exactly been moving like hotcakes prior to December.

But things have gotten way out of control now. The price increases have spread to Pitcairn (270/270X) with Newegg hiking these to a minimum of $229.99, and hurting AMD's competitiveness with gamers at the important ~$200 price point. And retailers are now gouging *hundreds* of extra dollars on Tahiti and Hawaii cards, of which AMD sees nothing. Either AMD needs to recapture these extra profits or they need to do something to ensure that MSRP is honored by AIB vendors and e-tailers. Right now Newegg is getting the gold mine (windfall profits) and AMD is getting the shaft (bad publicity).Reply

You are assuming that none of this inflation is comming from AMD or it's board partners. I would surprised if everyone just let Newegg throw their biscuits into the free gravy. Sales are sales and any plublicity is good plublicity to most companies. But I don't think that inflated prices look that bad to anyone other than gamers. To investors and company big-shots it just looks like an eago boost and lost proffits.Reply

Ryan's a smart guy but it is just his informed opinion and he has been wrong before (see Mantle & DX link), but yes an official denial from AMD would be great.

AMD has admitted to jacking up the price after the fact in the past, so this really wouldn't be anything new (see 5850/5870). The story wasn't broadly advertised of course, people just chalked it up to greedy retailers etc back then too, until AMD was pressed and finally fessed up to it.

JDG1980 - I see where you are coming from but I slightly disagree with your conclusion.

As long as AMD continues to sell the silicon they make at amazing rates, it's good for their business regardless of a missed opportunity to further mark up their products. They are selling everything they make with margins they deemed appropriate. Trust me as a buyer in the retail industry, what's happening to AMD's graphics division is what most vendors would kill for.

Secondly, AMD has ensured that they will remain relevant in the minds of gamers for the next generation of gaming. XB1, PS4, Wii-U (i debated about adding that one) are all AMD. As long as game developers are developing and optimizing for AMD GPUs, Nvidia doesn't have much ground to gain.

Third point to consider: The ~$200 price point is all important like you said, but let's remember to who. It's important to the hardcore gamer on a budget. The casual PC gamers, which represent a much bigger market actually shop in the price range of the 250 and 260 Radeon series.

I'd love if Ryan and Anand could weigh in on their opinion on whether this is good or bad for AMD. Obviously there are points to both sides and we don't know which is right, but it's fun to debate :)Reply

I'd like to clarify my comment above about "Nvidia doesn't have much ground gain"

Nvidia is clearly the top dog in the PC gaming house. Developers know that the majority of PC gamers (not using integrated graphics) are using Nvidia GPUs. So when I say Nvidia doesn't have much to gain, it's because they are already ahead.Reply

I just don't buy the notion AMD isn't getting a cut of this cryptocoin price rush. They could easily cut supply to retailers looking to gouge without their consent by cutting supply to those who sell above MSRP, but they have no incentive to do so if they are getting a cut of the extra margins.

Also, you could buy any 290/290X you wanted at the original gauged prices of $500-550 for a 290 and 630-700 for a 290X for quite awhile, but only recently has everything been selling out and prices going even higher.

I think there's a supply issue with AMD chips/cards as well playing a part in this. Launch 290/290X were near impossible to get and then they were never really restocked as everyone waited for custom cooled cards. Those only started appearing last month but in small quanties and came with the first set of markups...and now we have this huge shortage of cards leading to insane markups.

We will see the results in AMD's Q1 financials, but their Q4 FY2014 financials didn't really indicate them selling everything out, as they saw higher ASP but reduced GPU revenue. Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce business absolutely cleaned house.Reply

"I think there's a supply issue with AMD chips/cards as well playing a part in this."You realize that you are describing the most basic economic principle, right? There is clearly high demand for AMD cards in NA because of cryptocoin mining. But that would be no issue if the supply was equally high or higher. Since it isn't, that constitutes as a supply issue. Duh.Reply

Cryptocoin mining isn't a new phenomenon, there was obviously plenty of supply before Hawaii to keep the miners and gamers satisfied. This insane price gouging only occurred after Hawaii, which has been notoriously scarce on the market. Point is production is LOWER than previous AMD high-end parts, coupled with high demand this is what is leading to a much steeper spike on the supply/demand curve. I know a basic economic principle that you apparently glossed over. Duh.

We know for a fact they are not selling more GPUs at a higher price, ie. more supply and more demand, because their QoQ GPU revenues were down but their margins were up. I am sure we will see more of the same in Q1, don't be surprised to see much higher ASPs and margins btw.Reply

Yes it did, but Hawaii was already scarce and AMD started ramping down and fire-selling their old lines of GPUs (7950/7970 could be had for dirt cheap, like $150 for 7950 and $250 for 7970). But something happened in AMD's supply chain and they didn't ramp Hawaii enough and even 280X became scarce and price was quickly jacked up.Reply

How do you know for a fact that AMD started ramping down Hawaii chips? I see you are very active on the comments and trying really hard to prove that this is all some sort of AMD' scheme to increase the price. Instead of just casting baseless claims just go and read some of the comments people have left under review section of R9-290X board on NewEgg. You see quite few comments by miners who are saying they have mining rigs with 6 or more of these boards. If these guys are buying this number of R9-290X boards, the reason for increase in price is indeed crypto-currenty and nothing else.Reply

I didn't say AMD was ramping down their Hawaii chips, if anything they have been doing their best to ramp them up, but Hawaii is also the biggest chip they have ever made and the hottest GPU ever created, so it would not surprise me if they were having trouble getting the yields they would like on it.

They most likely ramped down Tahiti production prematurely, as they went into a firesale phase on 7950/7970 parts shortly after R9 280X launched instead of just rebadging those parts. You can verify this easily in any Hot Deals forum with 7950s hitting $150 and 7970s hitting $220. R9 280X stock quickly ran out, and only now are we getting the successor to the 7950 in the R9 280 (to be launched in a few weeks). Again, this coincides with the 8-10 weeks it would have taken AMD to bake new wafers at TSMC from that 1st week in December timeframe.

I just find it amazing people think AMD is not profiting from this at all and also unfair to retailers like Newegg taking the blame, given the fact many GPUs have sold out instantly in the past due to incredibly high demand and the MSRP was never raised in such a manner. GTX 480, 580, 680 and even Titan all come to mind as examples from the last few years.Reply

I've seen editors on Tom's say the same, but this is was the first example that came to mind. It's from Ryan Smith's most recent "Best Video Cards" article:

"Truth be told we had figured this would blow over by now (if only due to increases in mining difficulty multipliers), but AMD card prices have held their inflated prices for almost two months now. Which on a side note is good for AMD – they’re clearly selling almost everything they can make – but it’s also not great because they’re not the one setting these new card prices, or the ones collecting the higher profit. The same goes for the partners, who are still selling the finished cards to retailers at normal prices. Instead the profit between MSRP and these inflated prices is being captured by retailers, which although is good for them (retail is a notoriously low margin business), it does mean that the always financially precarious AMD doesn’t get to further improve their balance sheets in the process."

"•GPU revenue decreased quarter on quarter and year over year due to lower unit volume shipments. Operating income was $22 million, compared to $18 million in the third quarter and $27 million in the same quarter a year ago."

Despite claims they sold out everything, their GPU revenue for Q4 was LOWER but their ASP was HIGHER both sequentially and YoY. If supply was not an issue and constant from Q3 as many here claim, they would have seen both HIGHER revenue AND higher ASP from their GPU division, especially given the fact they had two high-demand single GPU parts selling at higher prices than they have seen since the X1950XTX.

Rumblings of AMD GPU shortages, even back in Dec. 9th. AMD sending their "top man" out to Asia to try and ramp up supply, probably a bit too little too late given these chips take months to bake.

Yep was late, I couldn't find a breakout of Q4 2013 numbers but they did show an increase in Q4 revenue for GPUs but most of the increase was due to console numbers. Either way I think there would have been a much higher spike in revenue in Q4 if there was not a shortage on AMD's part.Reply

Wow, just wow. Those are your "plenty of links to the contrary" huh? The Revenue and ASP figures you're comparing are from two completely different years. I think you're trying a little too hard to connect the dots dude, and I hate to break it to you, but you're just not as smart or informed as you think you are. If you think you know something that Ryan Smith and a bunch of other tech editors don't know, take it up with them, but I would strongly suggest checking your conspiracy theories for inconsistencies before you do.Reply

Again, I never said Cryptocoin wasn't increasing demand for AMD cards, I simply stated I believe AMD did not anticipate demand and/or were having yield issues on high-end Hawaii chips, leading to the current situation of high demand AND low supply.

If the situation was as AMD said and they were able to supply the channel as they would have liked, I doubt we would have seen such a small gain in Q4 GPU revenue while Nvidia cleaned up due to low supply and low competition from AMD. I think Q1 2014 will see more of the same.Reply

Could certainly be AMD's console APUs cutting into their wafer allocation at AMD, given they shipped and sold roughly ~8M APUs to Sony/Microsoft in Q3/Q4. Those wafers had to come from somewhere and it looks like desktop discrete supply took the brunt of it.Reply

> In summary, I think AMD is using cryptocoin and the blame vendors are getting as a convenient excuse for the supply shortages and price hikes so they don't look like the bad guy in all of this.

Then why wouldn't they try it in Europe (and Asia?) as well? Here prices are still normal. Supply is not great, but we're not sold out either. And it's not like there wouldn't be a ton of gamers, hardware enthusiasts, BOINC crunchers etc. here. It's just that the electricity is too expensive to make big money with whatever-coin.Reply

Because the additional demand isn't there in Europe and Asia from cryptocoin. I think you are seeing what true supply and demand is for AMD parts, strictly for gaming, where supply is not great but not completely sold out either. Reply

Vis-à-vis burning their customer relationships??? What kind of relationship with a vendor would you have if you knew your vendors were selling your parts at 2x the price but keeping the additional profits for themselves? Reply

The only way I can see AMD fixing is to start selling Radeon's directly from AMD.com at msrp.

But i'm sure this will upset all the Resellers like New Egg because they won't be able to price gouge everyone. I will most like cause with any contracts agreement they have setup. And would probably hurt amd more in the long run. Sad state of affairs but what can you do....Reply

Because I think they are already doing this....thus there is no incentive for AMD to force vendors to drop prices.

What is being asserted here is that:

1) Only vendors are responsible for the gouging.2) Only vendors are profiting from the gouging.

I do not believe this is correct, because if that was the case, AMD could easily do as I suggested to stop this price gouging.

Right now they gain nothing, only a bad reputation from their customers while their vendors profit?Sorry, this does not happen in the real world, and we will see this reflected in their Q1 financials (flat or reduced revenue with MUCH higher GPU ASP/Margins).Reply

Correct. Market forces dictate that mining migrates to the areas with the lowest electricity prices. The greater the disparity in electricity prices, the more concentrated the mining becomes. Since North America has the world's cheapest electricity by a large margin (barring exceptions like Kuwait), this shortage of cards is primarily a North American issue.

However, unlike what is being said in other posts, there is no electricity price threshold at which cryptocurrency dies because of high electricity prices. The mining market is almost perfectly elastic. An increase in average electricity prices will initially result in lower profits per miner, which causes some people to stop mining, which will cause difficulty to drop, which causes average payout to increase for the remaining miners compensating for the pricier electricity.Reply

There is a particular integer operation (BIT_ALIGN_INT) used in cryptocoin mining that takes only one cycle on AMD's architecture, but three cycles on Nvidia. As a result, AMD's cards have considerably higher hashrates per core / per watt.Reply

Yes; however, improvements recently on the Nvidia side have been dramatic recently (as in, 100%). I can routinely squeeze 550-580 khash/sec from a 780 (non-Ti), and with some voltage modding and further overclocking, I imagine 600+ khash/sec is inevitable. Compare that to the 320 khash/sec on that chart. Reply

I just got that model for 598 shipped Fedex 2 day from another online vendor. They are out of stock now, but if you do a little digging you can get a not terrible deal. At least not as terrible as Newegg's prices. Reply

No, that's just another facet of the market. If you have to have instant gratification you will pay extra for it. If you don't mind waiting a few weeks you can save money and pay reasonable prices.Reply

"The culprit, as has been the case since the start, continues to be the strong demand for the cards from cryptocoin miners, who are willing to pay a premium for the cards in anticipation of still being able to turn a profit off of them in the long run."

The truth is actually much worse than this. The real culprit are criminal organizations who are using cryptomining in order to launder their money. They don't care if they are losing money in the process because it costs them significantly less than typical money laundering schemes.Reply

"The truth is actually much worse than this. The real culprit are criminal organizations who are using cryptomining in order to launder their money. They don't care if they are losing money in the process because it costs them significantly less than typical money laundering schemes."

You've hit the nail on the head. If you have millions and millions of ill-begotten dollars, and you can go out and buy a bunch of graphics cards and convert that millions and millions of illegal money into bitcoins or litecoins, which can't be traced to you, that's a very strong incentive to do just that. The best part is that, once you've finished mining the coins, you can still sell the cards used and get back some of your initial outlay, so you've laundered all your illegal money by buying the cards and mining with them, and then you get untraceable bit/litecoins, and then you make legitimate money back when you sell the cards. If that's not ingenious, I don't know what is. Only thing is that the value of the bit/litecoins is only based on what people perceive it to be. If people suddenly decided en mass, that bitcoins weren't worth anything, then they wouldn't be worth anything. I'm pretty sure governments around the world are going to start clamping down on these crytocoins for this very reason.Reply

Most of what they said is ignorant FUD combined with fantasies they probably got from the crime novels they've been reading.

None of the current crypto-coins are anymore anonymous than saying visiting Anandtech is doing it "anonymously". The only way transactions are "anonymous" is if you use Tor, but then you can say that about visiting Anandtech under Tor or anything else, too. There's nothing inherently "anonymous" about cryptocoins.Reply

lol! What? So they are going to laundry millions of dollars one video card at a time in order to make it back mining. Also, how are they getting this dirty money to the etailers? From Swiss bank accounts? You've got to be joking. Reply

I don't have a problem with people using cryptomining to hide money from the government. Considering that they probably earned that money in a market that was made lucrative by our governments own ridiculous drug policies.

Criminals aside, from an individual liberty standpoint I think any technology that allows us to make large money transactions without government involvement is a good thing. Reply

I disagree. The reason we all have clean water, safety in the form of police protection, excellent roads, excellent hospitals is because of taxes. Cryptomining allows people to hide their money and thus enjoy public benefits without their input. Reply

The issue has existed for much longer than cryptocurrency has existed. The U.S. secret service said it perfectly in the Senate hearings a few months ago. If someone wants to hide financial transactions, cash is still much better than cryptocurrency, and they have been dealing with cash based transactions for centuries.Reply

I bought two of the 290x when they first came out @ $550 each. I had a feeling there might be a shortage if I waited - as that has been the case with most flagship video card releases lately - but I didn't expect them to nearly double in price.Reply

Yes, and we have all the grey/black market industries where the anonymous nature cryptocoin payments make it really appealing to use, like buying drugs, online gambling purses, escort service payments, money laundering, buying guns etc. When mixed in with the users/miners who use it only for legit reasons, it all becomes part of the laundering/anonymous nature of cryptocoin transactions.Reply

Said drugs and cryptocoin once in the same sentence, but thanks for keeping track. Yes cryptocoins have legitimate uses, but the fact remains, it is popular for greymarket transactions and money laundering due to it's anonymous, unregulated, and decentralized nature.Reply

Prices on NVidia cards have not changed. The only people who hurt from this are the die hard AMD fans who will not consider NVidia alternatives. I don't have empathy towards anyone who is brand loyal.Reply

Put another way, "Prices on Nvidia cards have remained high." If AMD cards sold at MSRP, Nvidia might be compelled to lower its prices and/or introduce newer cards sooner, offering more value for money. Even if you don't care whether your card is red or green, without cryptocurrency-driven demand, gaming value for money would be better.Reply

so if you game. mine a few hours a day and get your money back. for the premium paid. I have 2x r 290's mining at 75c temp and hashing 1650kh. they earned . about 260 usd over the last 30 days. so they cost me 740 not 1000. add 60 for power and I spent 800 for the pair. they will earn out by apr 1st. just in time for the warmer weather.Reply

Yes, we are all paying more for this. Both nVidia and AMD cards are above what they would typically be if the market had evolved naturally. AMD is making out better as well. They are getting full price for their cards without rebates, bundles, wholesale discounts, etc...Reply

Can we start talking about being smart and finding a deal (relatively speaking)?

Newegg is basically leeching money out of people, meanwhile, a quick jump onto www.pcpartpicker.com, looking ta GPUs, visiting multiple sites and checking which are in stock can get you cards for under $750 last time I checked.Reply

I wonder what the heck we need all those *coin hashes for. What if the coin-farms exceed the number of needed hashes? Is there any safeguard built in not to excessively waste energy in such cases? Or what if we don't have enough hashing power.. can you not trade *coins then?

To me this seems to be more of an "end in itself" rather than anything we should use our general-purpose number crunchers for. I'd rather have them do actual science, like folding proteins etc.Reply

When I bought my retail Sapphire R9 290 for 399 from Amazon my brothers were critical ,as the reviews were mostly negative due to the noise and heat ,but at that time my logic was that if I want to refine this card I can simply do so with NZXT Kraken G30 + a cheap closed loop water cooling and I would still pay less than a GTX 780 (which was selling for roughly 520 $ at that time) ,when modified cards started to roll out I felt abit bitter ,as those were of a much better heat/noise levels .Now I feel reallly happy for my decision ,as the cheapeast non retail 290 sells for over 600 atm!!!Reply

Had to shell out $750 for a second 290X a couple weeks ago, after purchasing the first on launch week for $550. Four days after that, they hit $900. Most of my PhD research is centered around computational electrodynamics, which are fantastically suited for OpenCL. I'm under a major deadline and had no option other than to order the card. I'm glad something as frivolous as a cryptocurrency has the capacity to impede science, and of course gaming -_-Reply